Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party Campaign Posters

The summer of 1964 in Mississippi was an important moment in civil rights history, not only was the Freedom Summer Project underway, but this was also when the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) was founded. The MFDP was led by civil rights activists Fannie Lou Hamer, Victoria Gray Adams, Bob Moses, and Lawrence Guyot to name a few, and this was a grassroots political party. The purpose of the MFDP was to challenge the all-white Democratic Party that dominated politics in Mississippi and upheld the system of white supremacy. The MFDP had hoped that if African Americans could gain seats within the Democratic Party then they would be able to institute policy changes while also ensuring African Americans were represented in the political sphere for which they were disenfranchised. However, in August of 1964 at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey the MFDP failed to gain enough seats within the party. At the risk of losing support of the southern white delegates, Lyndon B. Johnson offered little support to MFDP party leaders and offered Hubert Humphrey the position of Vice President if he assisted in preventing MFDP from being seated at the convention. Therefore, MFDP was only offered two seats within the Democratic Party and they were offered to Aaron Henry and Rev. Ed King. The party was not given a choice as to who would represent them, instead members of the Democratic Party outside of MFDP chose who would represent the party, and all the other members would be considered “honored guests” and they would have no voting capabilities. Ultimately, having been left out of the discussion on who would represent them, MFDP rejected the two-seat compromise. Even though the party did not gain political recognition, that did not stop many of its leaders from running for public office. As indicated by the campaign posters in this collection Aaron Henry, Fannie Lou Hamer, Annie Devine and Victoria Gray launched political campaigns for public office in the fall of 1964.